The U.S.-Mexico border as liminal space: implications for policy and administration

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the U.S.-Mexico border by exploring the concepts of otherness and liminality in light of restrictive immigration discourses that otherize undocumented Hispanics as a ‘threat to the whole.’ Through the use of ethnographic sources this paper argues that face-to-face interactions unveil a much more complex picture of life in the borderlands. The border emerges as a diverse realm of pull and push forces, with most people experiencing resistance and aversion at some point of their lives and opportunity and mobility at others. The liminal – understood as the in-between space along nation-state borders – helps account for the continuously transitional borderland experiences where both possibility and heightened risk may be at stake. Finally, the author suggests ways in which experiential understanding can help foment a more democratic and effective border policy making and implementation process.

KEYWORDS:

• Critical border policy
• U.S.-Mexico border
• Liminality
• public policy and administration
• interpretivism
• lived experience

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Among other U.S.-Mexico sister cities are McAllen-Reynosa, Laredo-Nuevo Laredo, Eagle Pass-Piedras Negras, Del Rio-Ciudad Acuña, Douglas-Agua Prieta, Nogales-Heroica Nogales, San Luis-San Luis Río Colorado, and Calexico-Mexicali.

2. Migratory flows have varied over time, but they proceed mainly from Central America and Mexico, and to a lesser degree from South America. Overall, migrants flee economic and political oppression, organized violence and crime, as well as abuse in their countries of origin (Durand 2017; Massey, Durand, and Malone 2002).

3. The drug cartel wars take place at a regional scale and are fuelled by international drug traffic networks.

4. ‘Bordering’ alludes to ‘producing ideas of difference about places and people’ (Fleuriet 2021, 120). In her recently published ethnography, Fleuriet found that national news and political discourse incorrectly and in a slanted way characterize the border environment as corrupt, insalubrious, poor, and dangerous. In addition, national political movements engage in ‘rebordering the U.S.–Mexico borderlands region [by] reinscribing and reproducing assumed differences’ (Fleuriet 2021, 120). Fleuriet argues that these negative portrayals end up shaping the national imagery about ‘the border’ as a place in a constant state of emergency and in need of constant state intervention.

5. Border hybridity is associated with a way of thinking and identity formation founded on difference as a constitutive, rather than a dividing element. Under this view, the notion of mestiza identity makes sense, as exemplified in the literary work of Anzaldúa (1987) and others who oppose ‘the strict categorical distinctions […] the Western logic of identity, the logic of either/or’ (Vila 2000, 9).

6. The concept of liminality that I draw on here derives from Stoller’s work, which borrows from Victor Turner’s (1967/1970 The Forest of Symbols regarding rites of passage in tribal societies, where liminality appears as ‘the state of being betwixt and between things’ (Stoller 2009, 179).

7. The ways in which prior experiences shape who we are and our interpretation of the context or situation at hand.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

María Verónica Elías

María Verónica Elías, PhD. is assistant professor of public administration at the University of Texas, San Antonio. Her research interests lie in the areas of public administration theory and epistemology, administration and management of the borderlands, and participatory governance processes. She has recently published in Administration & Society, Public Administration Quarterly, and Journal of Community Practice, among other outlets.